Welcome to this week's Compliance and Privacy News.
It's been a busy couple of weeks since the last
newsletter. In the UK we've had a statement from the
Information Commissioner on E-mail marketing, from
Ofcom on "silent calls" and further afield we've had
HP forced to buy its own customer database to
prevent it "falling into the wrong hands". Add to
this the latest Internet Security Intelligence
Briefing (ISIB) Report and you can see why you need
to take a closer look at today's newsletter.

We welcome your comments and views – why not post
your views on these articles on our website today
via our new Discussion Groups? The link is at the
bottom of this email.

For VeriSign customers there is a VeriSign MSS
3.0 Portal training session tomorrow. See below for
details.

Peter Andrews

Wi-Fi Breaks Data Protection Law

Do you use Wi-fi? Whether you have installed in your
company, offer a wi-fi hotspot service or simply use
wi-fi to connect your laptop to the web while you're
on the move, then you run the risk of breaking Data
Protection laws. At least that's what the EU
Information Commissioners believe. They are now
looking long and hard at how well companies protect
data and will be turning their attention to Wi-Fi.

The VeriSign® Internet Security Intelligence
Briefing reports current trends in Internet growth
and usage as well as security events and online
fraud. It includes intelligence drawn from a variety
of VeriSign infrastructure services, including
Domain Name System (DNS) services, digital
certificates (SSL and PKI), Managed Security
Services (MSS), Payment Services, and Fraud
Protection Services. In this latest issue it looks
at the security risks inherent in VoIP; reports on
the latest adware and spyware trends and how older
vulnerabilities are still exposing companies to attack.

Your free copy of the report is ready to download
from the Compliance and Privacy site, compliments of
VeriSign.

If you use the VeriSign MSS service then you will
want to attend the Customer Training session taking
place on Tuesday 15th November, via WebEx. VeriSign
migrated all MSS customers to the 3.0 version of
the Customer Portal over the weekend. So, they will
be providing a training session for customers on the
new portal via WebEx on Tuesday, November 15th at 9
AM PST/ 5PM GMT. Details are below:

Ofcom has finally announced that it will use
its powers under the Communications Act (Sections
128-131 of the Communications Act 2003) to take
action against persistent misusers of the network.
And misuse now includes silent calls. (A silent call
is one where an automated dialer initiates a call
when there is no tele-operator available to handle
the call, resulting in the phone ringing but the
recipient of the call only hearing silence.) Until
now companies were permitted a maximum of 5% of
calls being "silent calls". Now that has been dropped to
3% and an "informative message" must be played. It
is hoped that this change will slow the rate of TPS
"opt-out" to telemarketing, currently at over 11
million numbers and growing at c. 30,000 daily!

Readers should note that references to VeriSign's sponsorship are historical. That sponsorship ended on 28 February 2007, and is simply included here for context and historical purposes. VeriSign is not formally associated with this site in any manner, and has asked us to emphasise this point.